BOSTON—"It was spectacular. I’m speechless. I got goose bumps!
“I’m getting teary-eyed now,” Panayiota Bakis said during intermission on Monday evening at The Boston Opera House. Her eyes began to well up as she spoke.
“I got goose bumps. It was spectacular, spectacular.”
Ms. Bakis, a second-generation Greek folk dancer, and Middle Eastern drummer Amer Moheiddin were in the audience for Shen Yun Performing Arts, the premier classical Chinese dance and music company based in New York, now on its seventh annual world tour.
“Amazing show, really. Very good,” Mr. Moheiddin said. He and Ms. Bakis are performers who have been “to every state and everywhere,” he said. “But tonight was amazing. This is one of the best shows we ever saw, seriously. Very good—everything. Beautiful.”
As a musician, Mr. Moheiddin was especially impressed with the music.
“I love the music. You feel the music,” he said. “It’s like a studio recording because everything is perfect. All night, you could hear everything—everything is so clear.”
“The combination of the Western and the classical Chinese is amazing,” Ms. Bakis added.
The Shen Yun Performing Arts Orchestra is a seamless blending of East and West that creates “one fresh, harmonious sound,” according to the company’s website, and makes this orchestra unique. Traditional Chinese instruments lead the melodies while a Western philharmonic orchestra plays the foundation.
“And the combination of the opera singer and the piano! It just brought everything,” Ms. Bakis said.
Shen Yun’s vocal soloists use bel canto technique while singing Chinese lyrics. “This means that the singer must grasp the highly difficult technical requirements of bel canto operatic singing while retaining the proper Chinese articulation and diction—today, this is unparalleled,” the website states.
The couple also loved the animated digital backdrops, which, through state-of-the-art technology, “allow you to forget where you are, and journey to another place and time,” the website states.
‘It’s like you’re there,“ Ms. Bakis said. ”You see them coming out from the screen—unbelievable! It was beautiful.”
“It’s like real, exactly. Especially when they come from behind the stage, it looks real,” Mr. Moheiddin added. “Excellent!”
“Some shows, they’re boring,” Ms. Bakis said, “but this combined everything—dance, music, singing, opera, piano—everything.”
“It was amazing,” she said. “I feel honored to participate in the show and watch it.”
Reporting by Hua Chang and Connie Phillips.
New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts has three touring companies that perform simultaneously around the world. For more information, visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org
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